by Rob Sanders
‘The most desperate of times, my lord,’ Orphiel admitted. ‘Eldorath Starbane has sent me for you, Kael Ra. Alaitoc needs you once more, my Prince Ecliptic.’
‘No…’
‘I have an army, crafted in wraithbone,’ Orphiel said, ‘and a shrine suit waiting to lead it. Vessels through which you might once more walk in the realm of the living and bring death to the enemies of the eldar.’
‘The sorceries you speak of,’ Kael Ra said, ‘are unnatural.’
‘They are necessary,’ the seer told him.
‘No.’
‘Your kindred die,’ Nestra Orphiel said. ‘Enemies of the eldar take our hope from the Eastern Fringe, world by world. Our warriors on Carnac face annihilation. Without a rearguard. Without a defensive line that will not break, from behind which our kindred can evacuate, the Traveller will take the webway gate. The world spirit. The eldar that have fought for a doomed world.’
Kael Ra said nothing. The spiritseer pointed down at the Alaitoc army fighting their way through the greenskin host. ‘You see your warriors down there? Your guardians? Your high priests of war? Like you, they walk the webway no more. Each and every one of them would follow you back into bloodshed, should you ask them to.’ Again, Kael Ra said nothing. ‘The Alaitocii have need of their heroes. Warriors ancient and ancestral would flock to your unliving banner for the chance to fight once more with the Prince Ecliptic. Legends like you, Kael Ra.’
The autarch turned away from the Battle of Talhennor. His defeat. His failure. He found the sneers of the Brothers Rhespasian waiting for him. His judgement was complete.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Your craftworld calls,’ Nestra Orphiel told him, ‘and when your craftworld calls, you damn well answer.’
‘Or what?’ Kael Ra shot back. ‘A fate worse than death? You can devise no greater punishment for a warrior than shame, necromancer, and I have devised that all for myself.’
For a few seconds, both seer and autarch were silent. The distant dirge of battle intruded on the moment. The autarch heard his warriors fighting. Fighting and dying, for him.
‘Asuryan’s light grows dim, departed brother,’ Orphiel said. ‘We are but a shadow of what we were with you to lead us. So it goes with all the children of Isha. The eldar can ill afford defeat but when doom is inevitable we must save all we can. The future of our race belongs to the living, Kael Ra – just as the glories of our past are yours. Know this, Prince Ecliptic. I cannot compel you. Your aid must be given freely. I can no more promise you success at Carnac than fate could bestow at Talhennor. We have lost the fringe world. Success can only be measured in the number of eldar saved, who in turn may fight another day, for some other cause on some other world. Achievement – in the emptiness of these spectral halls. How many more of your brothers and sisters will you welcome into oblivion’s embrace, Kael Ra?’
‘No more,’ the autarch said finally, his words at once empty and leaden. He spoke with the chill certainty of an eldar who had accepted his fate. ‘The craftworld will reach out, through the fury of its fallen, and bring eternal peace to the enemies of the Alaitoc.’
‘Have no doubt, autarch,’ the seer said. ‘The Traveller is powerful. In putting yourself between him and his victims, you risk your very soul.’
‘Souls are for the taking,’ the Prince Ecliptic told her. ‘I dare this Traveller to try…’
The exodite world of Carnac was a bad dream that had come true. At least that was the way Kael Ra experienced it through the medium of a living death. It had been a tiny but beautiful corner of the galaxy once. War had come to the exodite world, however, and brought with it the ugliness of death and destruction. Lush plains were now ashen deserts of razed wilderness. Rivers of blood and rust, choked with bodies. Copse-belts of tropical titanwoods that had been replaced with petrified bone orchards of colossal, black stakes stabbing at the sky.
Beyond the great crumbling archway of the Crescent-Kharellion – the exodite world’s primary nexus gate – Kael Ra stepped out into the wonder of the Carnacian world spirit. A forest of crystal obelisks and menhirs – all perfectly crafted and inscribed with the runes of the ancients – struck out from the webway gate portal in every direction. The mystery of their workings and the immaterial interrelation of their patterns and equidistant orientations were almost palpable. The stone circles, monolithic grids and clusters of lesser tablets about crystal totems housed the dead ancestors of Carnac’s exodite clans in the same way that the infinity circuit of the craftworld had provided the safety of a soul matrix for Alaitoc’s fallen.
It was among the stones of the world spirit – in the spaces between, the air thick with the immaterial energies of observance and containment – that the Prince Ecliptic saw the first evidence of an evacuation. Nestra Orphiel had informed him that an exodus was already well under way. While the exodite clanspeople fled their farms and villages, their domesticated beastherds heavily laden with the nomadic trappings of their former lives, Orphiel’s sister spiritseers evacuated the souls of their long-dead ancestors. Kael Ra observed the essences that powered the world spirit extracted through the observance of solemn ritual and transported in waystones to the safety of the webway and the craftworld beyond. There they would find peace where Kael Ra had failed to achieve, in the wraithscape of the infinity circuit.
Striding through the network of standing stones, at the head of his company of the dead – his Continuum – Kael Ra possessed a giant wraithbone construct, a colossus of gentle lines, psychoactive intricacy and beautiful doom. Its long legs carried the burning soul of the Prince Ecliptic with graceful assurance. In its willowy arms and cannon-mounted gauntlets it carried the broad blade of a mighty ghostglaive that crackled with hate and in length was almost as tall as the towering construct itself. The construct’s breechcloth and mantle fluttered from its slight torso like the tail of a comet. The wraithbone vanes elegantly erupting from its shoulders helped to stabilise the living machine’s mighty movements and functioned as gyroscopic dampeners for the pair of bulbous missile launching pods, mounted either side of the tapering extravagance of its soulmelding helm. Like a shrine statue infused with a living death, the magnificent construct was worthy of the Prince Ecliptic. To Kael Ra, the wraithbone armour felt like a second skin. Weapons burned in his grasp no less than they had when the autarch was alive. He felt more assured, more capable, more powerful than ever and strode through the Carnacian world spirit like the son of a god.
Behind him, marching with the dread synchrony of an army of the dead were several hundred wraithguard and wraithblade warrior constructs, bearing the dark psychoplastic armour of the Alaitoc. Each was powered by the lost soul of a fallen warrior. Many had fought with Kael Ra at Talhennor. The others simply wished they had. All had traded their souls with the necromancer for the chance to follow the Prince Ecliptic into battle on Carnac. Some carried cannons and vortex weaponry. Some carried pairs of ghost swords – the blades of which crackling with dark energy. Others force shields and crackling axes. Through the Continuum’s ranks strode the legends, heroes and former autarchs Nestra Orphiel had recruited – wraithlords all. Each piloted their own distinctive colossus, equipped with the construct-weaponry of their favouring: magnificent spears, swords and shields; gauntlets glowing with destructive power; the cradled lengths of scatter lasers, cannons, launchers and lances.
The spiritseer herself piloted a war walker, shimmering in a nexus of intensified energy fields. One with the machine, Orphiel travelled high above the wraithguard she united with her necromantic powers on the walker’s towering legs. At that height the seer almost came level with the Prince Ecliptic’s exaggerated helm. Kael Ra informed her that he intended to meet the Traveller’s world-crushing armies with his warriors and without the spiritseer. He suggested that she return with her craftworld kin and entrust the defence of the Alaitoc withdrawal to the Continuum. Orphiel conceded that that ther
e was nowhere else she would rather be but told the Prince Ecliptic that without her presence on the field of battle, the wraithbone constructs of the Continuum would give no battle to the enemy at all and stand motionless like the great army of statues they resembled. Feeling the sting of wounded pride through the wraithscape, the spiritseer told the autarch to think of her as the medium through which he commanded rather than the mission commander herself.
‘I am the air through which your orders carry,’ Orphiel had said. ‘Without the air, your orders would not reach those for which they were intended – but without you, Prince Ecliptic, there would be no orders to follow.’
Kael Ra’s grim silence seemed to satisfy the spiritseer but the autarch had insisted that she take to the battlefield within the safety of a vehicle. ‘I have my own protection,’ the seer insisted as they moved through the standing stones of the world spirit. It was not an empty boast. The unliving columns of the Continuum – wraithguard, wraithblades and the wraithlords that led them – marched between the legs of a gargantuan statue. Kael Ra had taken the colossus for some ancient and long-forgotten gate or archway but upon their approach discovered it to be a wraithbone construct like his own. But larger. Far larger. It was something he had never seen. A towering shrine to destruction, that bestrode the world spirit and stood sentinel before the Crescent-Kharellion.
‘What is it?’ the Prince Ecliptic asked.
‘A wraithknight,’ Orphiel told him. She commanded, ‘Brothers Rhespasian – with me.’
The giant thing moved – its displacements lighter and sharper for a construct so massive it shook the ground upon which it walked. Kael Ra recalled the sentinels that had flanked the seer down in the infinity circuit, one a vision of ghostly life – like his mistress – and the other his fallen twin. Between them, the living and the dead piloted the monstrous structure, giving the war machine unparalleled speed and manoeuvrability among its wraithkind. A pair of scatter lasers sat on its shoulders like birds of prey, while its slender arm bore the seething lengths of a wraithcannon and a suncannon – the monstrous muzzles of which almost reached the ground. It was both wonder and aberration.
‘No,’ the Prince Ecliptic said.
‘Castien and Ehrendril will be a great asset in the battle to come,’ Nestra Orphiel said.
‘This monstrosity is a dealer in death,’ Kael Ra agreed, ‘any fool can see that. But it is the dead that march to meet the yngiract. You said it yourself: success on Carnac can only be measured in the number of eldar saved. With precious few of our kindred enjoying the blessing of Isha, I will not risk the living.’
‘Ehrendril is long fallen but I would not describe what Castien experiences up in that machine as life,’ Orphiel said.
‘Then let him spend whatever miserable existence you have allowed him here,’ Kael Ra said. ‘He can stand sentinel at the gate and watch for our victorious return. If we fail to stop the yngiract, then your Brothers Rhespasian and their monstrous war machine may yet taste of battle.’
The ghost army stomped its way south, leaving the gargantuan wraithknight to tower over the world spirit alone. Their solemn, rhythmic strides took them through collections of standing stones that were beginning to thin. As they did so, the Continuum moved through the withdrawing multitudes of elder, making for the Crescent-Kharellion under Eldorath Starbane’s orders. Clan eldar, exodites and outcasts limped on. They lead hulking beasts of burden north, the placid monsters carrying all that was left of their farms and homesteads. The exodites’s rustic robes and labouring garb was torn and bloody, their faces besmirched and blank with the horror of war.
Among their number were the throngs of Alaitoc guardians, Aspect Warriors and exarchs that had fought hard for the preservation of their cousins’ simple lives against an enemy innumerable. While the unfeeling legions of the yngiract trudged across the verdant plains of Carnac with the tireless efficiency of machines, disintegrating their way through villages, rangeland and farmsteads, the main body of Anrakyr the Traveller’s invasion force had marched on the Carnacian world spirit from the south. The Alaitoc had achieved wonders. Their allied pathfinders had created havoc for metal legions en route to wreck genocidal devastation on swiftly evacuating exodite communities. Their Phoenix fighters had chased enemy scythe ships through Carnac’s once lush valleys and narrow mountain canyons, bringing down death from above and securing safe passage for refugee caravans and withdrawing craftworld forces. The exarchs, seers and Carnacian chieftains had hit the enemy with searing precision – making use of their knowledge of the planet’s geography and using it against the Traveller’s minions. They had failed, however. Even with the prognostic advantage that the Alaitoc’s seers and warlocks could provide, the yngiract were too many and their mindless advance irresistible.
Eldorath Starbane had achieved the impossible in holding off the Traveller’s advance for as long as he had. He had given the eldar tribespeople of Carnac the precious days and hours they needed to reach safety. Withdrawing behind the formations of Alaitoc grav-tanks and the Engines of Vaul, Starbane had turned his attentions to the necessities of survival rather than victory. His farsight had shown him that, in order to save those left living, the Alaitoc would need to turn to the dead. His gift revealed that the successful extraction of the eldar from Carnac and safe passage to the craftworld lay in the hands of a young spiritseer named Nestra Orphiel. Despite his distaste for the dread arts, Starbane understood that it would take sacrificing the craftworld’s past in order to secure its future and had sent for spiritseer.
As the dour strides of the Continuum took them through the retreating ranks of the Alaitoc, the wounded warriors stared up at the mighty machines and the colossal constructs that loomed above the ordered formations. The weapons of the guardians and Aspect Warriors were empty and their armour smashed. They marched, hobbled and were carried from the smouldering field of battle in their thousands, the weight of their failure apparent on their forlorn faces. Only the sight of unliving legends, crafted from wraithbone and vengeance, seemed to draw their solemn stares. For a merciful moment, the survivors of Carnac were held by the spectacle of the dead walking to their aid and daydreamed of the destruction about to be visited upon enemies that they had left mere hours before.
The wounded and weary warriors parted to allow the small army of wraithguard and colossi through. Kael Ra felt for the devastated Alaitoc and the exodites that had lost their world. The Prince Ecliptic – like a statue, at once impassive and unheeding, yet inspirational – strode on. He had not come to Carnac to console his descendent kin, he had come to avenge them and ensure that they too survived to have successors. The autarch was no seer but felt that such successors would be needed by the Alaitoc in even darker times to come.
Walking towards Kael Ra with an assurance only foresight could deliver was a small party of warlocks. Their robes were ragged and scorched and the singing spears that they carried smoked with the immaterial energies of their calling. They did not part. They did not step aside. The warlocks stopped before the Prince Ecliptic’s mighty form and brought the autarch and his unliving host to a synchronous stop. Carried forward on the biped legs of her war walker, Nestra Orphiel came to a halt beside Kael Ra. As the capsule canopy lowered, the spiritseer presented herself to the warlocks. Two of the powerful warriors uncrossed their spears and moved to one side, revealing a figure in the ancient robes of a farseer. Kael Ra studied the figure through his wraithsight. The farseer stepped forward, the glyphs and symbols on his robes and armour waxing and waning with his movements. He clutched his forearms to his chest within dark sleeves that met, going some way to mask the farseer’s missing right hand. He did not remove his cracked high-helm. Such silent obstinacy spoke of rank and entitlement, but Kael Ra saw shame in the slump of the seer’s shoulders.
‘Farseer,’ Nestra Orphiel said, ‘I bring the reinforcements you sent for.’
For a few moments, the farseer did n
ot speak.
‘You bring me death,’ he said in a voice that was as empty as it was ancient.
‘I do,’ Orphiel admitted. ‘I bring death to our enemies. The great and gone of Alaitoc have returned so that the survivors of Carnac may one day do the same and take back the world for which they fought.’
‘And this is the Prince Ecliptic?’
‘You can speak for me with the living?’ Kael Ra asked.
‘I can,’ Orphiel said. ‘Speak, prince and I will give voice to your wraith-borne words.’
‘Farseer,’ Kael Ra said. ‘Like you, I once led the Alaitoc to war.’
‘I know who you are, warrior,’ Starbane said. ‘There are few among our people who do not.’
‘I present myself – and many like me – before the Alaitoc,’ Kael Ra said. ‘In not being at your side – in the flesh – in these tumultuous times, we have failed you. We do not aim to repeat that mistake, seer. An ancient and malefic enemy has driven our interests from this world. The Continuum will hold back the main body of this invasion force while you evacuate your honoured warriors. It will be our burden, as it is Vaul’s to support the skies on his great shoulders, and prevent the enemy from coming crashing down on Isha’s sacred children. I pledge my eternal soul to the solemn execution of this endeavour.’
‘Your present sacrifices are be honoured no less than those of your past, Prince Ecliptic,’ Starbane told the colossus.
‘Get your people out, farseer,’ Kael Ra said. The seer nodded grimly.
‘Sister-seer,’ he acknowledged Orphiel, ‘Autarch.’ With that Eldorath Starbane lowered his helm and walked on with his warlocks. The wraithguard army stood motionless as the farseer and his smashed forces headed for the Crescent-Kharellion. The aged seer paused and turned once more to the towering construct.
